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The Nigerian government has confirmed the second case of coronavirus in the country.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, announced this on Monday at a press conference in Benin City, the Edo State capital.
Ehanire briefed reporters at the boardroom of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, where he gave an update on the coronavirus infection in the country.
He, however, noted that the newly confirmed case was a contact of the index case and not an importation into the country.
The statement partly reads: “Two new developments have taken place since the last briefing in Abuja on the coronavirus situation in Nigeria.
The first is that a team of researchers from various institutions in Nigeria, including scientists from the Centre for Human and Zoology Virology in LUTH, African Centre for Genomics of Infectious Diseases in Redeemers University and the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) Lagos, combined their efforts to successfully perform the genome sequencing of the coronavirus strain that the index case brought to Nigeria and proved it to be a match with the virus circulating in Italy and Wuhan. This was coordinated by the Lagos State Ministry of Health and NCDC. It is the first time the sequencing of this virus has been performed in Africa. The result has been shared with International Authorities and the Director General of the World Health Organization has extended congratulations to Nigerian scientists for this achievement.
The other development is that contact tracing and monitoring in respect of the coronavirus index case presently receiving treatment in Lagos, has been diligently and conscientiously pursued since 27 February when the case was first diagnosed. As you know, 40 persons in Ogun and 20 in Lagos are under isolation and have remained free of any symptoms since. Nevertheless, the Federal Ministry of Health, following best practice, decided to test these persons for possible presence of coronavirus in their systems. On 8th March 2020, scientists confirmed the presence of coronavirus in one of the contacts. It is my duty therefore to announce a new case of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Nigeria The newly confirmed case is an Ogun State contact of the index case, but he has no significant clinical symptoms. This brings the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nigeria today to two.”